Justice (organisation)

JUSTICE is a human rights and law reform organisation based in the United Kingdom. It is the British section of the International Commission of Jurists, the international human rights organisation of lawyers devoted to the legal protection of human rights worldwide. Consequently, members of JUSTICE are predominantly barristers and solicitors, judges, legal academics, and law students.

JUSTICE is independent and all-party, having representatives of the three major political parties on its ruling Council. It is a registered charity under English law.

JUSTICE's Chief Executive is Fiona Rutherford, and the chair of the JUSTICE Council is Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws QC.

History

1957–2000

JUSTICE was founded in 1957, following the visit of a group of British lawyers to observe the treason trials of members of the African National Congress (ANC) in apartheid South Africa and the show-trials in communist Hungary. Its first chairman was Hartley Shawcross, the chief British prosecutor at Nuremberg. Other founding members included Sir John Galway Foster QC, and Peter Benenson who later established Amnesty International. Indeed, when AI first started in 1961, it shared its offices with JUSTICE.

In 1958, it became the British section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). The original terms of JUSTICE's constitution committed it "to uphold and strengthen the principles of the Rule of Law in the territories for which the British Parliament is directly or ultimately responsible: in particular, to assist in the administration of justice and in the preservation of the fundamental liberties of the individual". Indeed, JUSTICE itself gave rise to a number of subordinate branches in what were then still British colonies and dependent territories. As each of these countries moved towards independence in the 1960s, the branches reconstituted themselves as national sections of the ICJ. This, in turn, shifted the emphasis of JUSTICE's own work towards the UK itself.

Thus, although founded with an international orientation, JUSTICE quickly established a specific focus on the rule of law and protection of fundamental rights in the UK. Through the work of its first secretary, Tom Sargant OBE, JUSTICE rapidly developed expertise in cases involving miscarriages of justice, and secured the release of many prisoners who had been wrongly imprisoned. Sargant was instrumental in the establishment of the BBC
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